Lalley: Pierre protects state's freedoms

Even if they already are safeguarded

Feb. 7, 2013

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The peril of passion is that it can cloud logic.

Any 47-year-old man can present an ironclad litany of 30-year-old examples to illustrate this theory.

These are the moments that today we use to stitch together the tapestry of our youth.

“Remember that time we went to the BLANK and did BLANK on the BLANK and then that BLANK ran over the BLANK?”

“Yeah, man that was stupid.”

“She was pissed.”

“That’s for sure. And then you threw that BLANK through her BLANK and the BLANKITY BLANK BLANK BLANK chased you down that BLANK. Remember that?”

“Wow. Lucky we’re not all dead.”

“Yup.”

Fill in your story here, maybe over a couple of adult beverages with your mates.

So we can agree that passion is not the best method of decision making. There are times, we can agree, when cooler heads, with an ever-so-slight beat of logic still pulsing within, should prevail.

The South Dakota Legislature appears to be in one of those moments.

And it has to do with guns.

Now, before you blow the leaking O-rings in your eyeballs, call me out as a socialist tyrant bent on the destruction of all we hold dear and declare conservative jihad upon my lineage, just take a breath.

Let’s review.

Sixty-two of the good people elected to represent our interests at the South Dakota Legislature in the wilds of Pierre recently signed a resolution opposed to “all dilution and diminution of Second Amendment rights” by the federal government.

This isn’t a law, mind you. As I learned on Argus Leader Media reporter David Montgomery’s blog this week, it’s a “legislative finding,” which is more an expression of opinion, musings, if you will.

This resolution states: “The Founding Fathers freely and willingly abjured all legislative and executive authority to regulate gun ownership and usage, as well as the related issue of the maintenance and armament of state militias, to individual citizens and the states, respectively.”

NOTE: Who uses “abjured?” It means to give up on oath; to renounce. If you mean renounce, just say renounce. I wonder how many of the 62 knew the word before they signed. To be honest, I had to look it up.

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Not to be rude, but this resolution is an affront to the Second Amendment and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the states and the federal government laid out in the Constitution.

It’s not that the Legislature from a sparse and isolated state such as South Dakota doesn’t have a voice in national policy discussion. It certainly does. We’ve got our two senators just like everybody else.

Rather, it’s the idea that somehow Second Amendment needs protecting.

It does not.

It’s doing just fine on its own. It’s an actual amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Enshrined not just in the original Bill of Rights, but by more than 200 years of judicial examination and review against the practical challenges of the day.

In the end, after war and civil unrest and political manipulation, it’s still there.

Just like freedom of religion and speech and assembly and the press. Of protection against illegal search and seizure. To not have to house soldiers in our homes. And the right to a fair trial.

The South Dakota Legislature has not picked up on the threats to any of these rights.

Yet one can make a credible argument that several of the cherished civil liberties carved by the Founding Fathers into those first 10 amendments have endured a steady assault in the name of national security or domestic tranquility.

I sympathize generally with the libertarian notion of the rights of the individual to the point where it degrades the operational threads of our society. This is a median position, I suspect, in our great state. We fancy ourselves of independent and hearty stock.

We support the Second Amendment.

I like the First Amendment quite a bit as well.

Also pretty fond of Ol’ No. 4.

The genius of the Bill of Rights is not in the expression of individual freedoms to bear arms or distribute the news, but in its collective expression of the relationship between the people and the government.

Which is all to say that I really don’t understand what the South Dakota Legislature hopes to add to the gun debate with a statement saying don’t do anything that threatens the Constitution.

It’s like saying we’re against state-sponsored religion. Or unwarranted imprisonment. Or warrantless searches.

While we debate the issues under the rubric of these civil rights, and occasionally overstep those bounds, the core principle is carved in constitutional stone.

I don’t question the 62 state lawmakers’ passion on this issue.

But one wonders if the logic isn’t clouded.

“Remember that time the Legislature BLANKED on the BLANK without knowing that BLANK was on?”